Near voices
K. Yamazato, eds.
University of Hawaii, $20
In Jon Shirota’s play, Lucky Come Hawaii, the dining room where most of the action takes place is “not markedly Japanese, Hawaiian, or American. It is actually a combination of all three.” In many ways, the décor is a microcosm of Voices from Okinawa (University of Hawaii Press), which claims to be the first literary anthology showcasing Okinawan Americans. Featured are three plays by Shirota, along with interviews and personal essays, which highlight voices caught in the throes of transition, and raise complicated questions about what it means to be from Japan’s southernmost islands.
Lucky Come Hawai’i, which was produced in New York by the Pan Asian Repertory Theatre in 1990, takes place on Maui in December 1941. Against the backdrop of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Gasuda family must contemplate mixed loyalties between Japan–where, as Okinawans, they are sometimes made to feel inferior–and their new American identities. It’s a feat exacerbated by language barriers. Conversations with Army Sergeant Bob Weaver are funneled through a linguistic stew of rolling Rs, Pidgin and Japanese. Misunderstandings are both common and comical, even within the Okinawan community.
Although the subject matter is heavy, Shirota never lets the story sink. Side characters like Tengan, an Okinawan fisherman, and Ishi, a retired janitor, lend the play drunken flourishes of comedic mirth. And although it raises many questions without providing answers, characters like Weaver–who unpredictably resists turning into a foil of the “backstabbing, insensitive Haole”–lend a glimmer of hope amidst the drab backdrop of war.
Elsewhere, other writers also use the attacks on Pearl Harbor as a path into the question of identity. In “An Okinawan Nisei in Hawaii,” Philip K. Ige, who struggled throughout his childhood to be seen as both Okinawan and Japanese, reflects on how the attacks gave Okinawans the option to disassociate with the new enemy. In Kinuko Maehara Yamazato’s “The Gift: An Interview with June Hiroka Arakawa,” Arakawa describes the internal conflict she faced having grown up in Hawaii, then moving back to Japan shortly before the attacks. “All my classmates were happy to hear of the tremendous victory,” Arakawa says. “I was the only one crying.”
Woodblock prints by artist Ozaki Seiji appear frequently throughout the book on rice paper, breaking up the text. Accompanying the colorfully playful prints, with titles like “Woman Playing Teeku” and “Handball,” are paragraph-long descriptions detailing the objects cultural relevance–a reminder that beyond these strenuous questions of identity lies a culture rooted firmly in celebratory customs and art.
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